


old light

by 28ghosts



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Grief/Mourning, M/M, background Luke Skywalker/Bodhi Rook, slight Han Solo/Leia Organa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 01:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Chirrut raps his staff against Baze’s calf, snapping him back to the present. “Tell me how they look,” he hisses.Baze smiles despite himself, leaning into Chirrut’s shoulder to whisper. “Bodhi looks so proud that it’s like he’s glowing. Jyn looks like she’s about to start a fight, as always. I think Cassian is overwhelmed.”“And the others?”Baze squints as he examines the rest of the figures on the stage. “The Wookie looks like a Wookie,” he says, mock-thoughtful.





	

**Author's Note:**

> content warning for alcohol

Baze and Chirrut watch the award ceremony from the back of the hall. They stand side-by-side against the back wall, with a group of mechanics, as the Rebellion celebrates its new heroes, the crew of Rogue One and those who destroyed the Death Star. It is a nice ceremony, all things considered, though Baze is grateful not to be on stage with the rest of Rogue One, even though Bodhi had begged them. “Too old to stand on stage in front of people,” Baze had protested while still in medbay. Bodhi was worried about doing something foolish, like tripping on a step and onto Mon Mothma.

Chirrut raps his staff against Baze’s calf, snapping him back to the present. “Tell me how they look,” he hisses. 

Baze smiles despite himself, leaning into Chirrut’s shoulder to whisper. “Bodhi looks so proud that it’s like he’s glowing. Jyn looks like she’s about to start a fight, as always. I think Cassian is overwhelmed.”

“And the others?” 

Baze squints as he examines the rest of the figures on the stage. “The Wookie looks like a Wookie,” he says, mock-thoughtful. Chirrut smacks him with his staff again for that. “The Corellian pilot is tall, with brown hair. The pilot Skywalker has light hair, and he’s very young. The woman leading things is also very young, and her hair is brown too, but darker, like Jyn’s. The three of them are very pale, like Jyn. They’re all dressed up nicely.”

Chirrut hums consideringly. Baze isn’t really paying attention to what the woman is saying, more focused on the warm sense of Chirrut beside him, Jyn and Bodhi both looking pleased and overwhelmed and proud in front of so many people. Of all the treasures smuggled off of Jedha during the Imperial occupation, surely Bodhi and Chirrut are two of the most priceless. 

After a few minutes of speeches, there is applause, and Baze wraps one arm around Chirrut’s back to pull him even closer. Chirrut huffs at him but leans in accommodatingly, lets Baze lean his cheek against the top of Chirrut’s head.

“The Force is strong here,” Chirrut says, after the noise has started to die down. It’s probably good the Rebellion is abandoning this base anyways; Baze can tell the partying that will happen tonight might nearly destroy it. “It’s no coincidence. In two of the people on that stage, the Force is strong.”

“Jyn?” Baze asks.

Chirrut shakes his head. “The Force is with her, but this is different.”

“They say the pilot Skywalker destroyed the Death Star without using his ship’s computer,” Baze says.

Chirrut makes a noise of pleased surprise, then tips his head towards Baze. He looks tired. “Let’s find Bodhi.”

“A good idea,” Baze says.

* * *

(The two of them had been offered honors, too, of course. Chirrut had deferred first, more gently than Baze, who’d refused. He didn’t like the idea of standing in front of a crowd, yes, but then there was also _Jedha_ , the way Baze may have always disliked Saw and his Partisans, but at least the Partisans came to fight for them. Baze would take an ally over an avenger any day. And the Rebellion had avenged Jedha, destroying the Death Star, but the Partisans had fought for it. Maybe Baze will forgive the Rebellion for that one day. He knows, he _knows_ the Rebellion isn’t powerful enough to aid every planet occupied by the Empire. But for now, he lets himself be bitter. It is an easier feeling than grief.)

* * *

It takes them the better part of an hour to find Bodhi, and when they find him, he’s red-faced from either drink or having Skywalker’s arm thrown over his shoulders. Maybe both. But Bodhi is glad to see both of them and beckons from the other side of the room.

“I found Bodhi,” Baze says drily.

“Is he with Skywalker?” Chirrut asks.

Baze would ask how Chirrut knows, but perhaps it’s due to the Force, the way Chirrut could sense something on that stage. “Yes,” he says, as they make their way closer. “He seems to get along well with Bodhi.”

“Good,” Chirrut says, with a single-mindedness that makes Baze a little bit nervous.

“Baze! Chirrut!” Bodhi yells. “Have you -- have you met Luke Skywalker? Come, sit down!” 

There’s just enough room at the crowded table they’re sitting at for Baze and Chirrut. Baze keeps his hand light at Chirrut’s elbow as he sits, and between Baze’s touch and the echo-box, Chirrut easily sits next to him. They’re pressed thigh-to-thigh, but Baze has always been amenable to touching Chirrut.

“Not yet. We’re glad we’ve found you,” Chirrut says, arranging his staff against the inside of his leg so it won’t trip anyone drunkenly wandering by.

Bodhi beams at that. Baze reaches down to squeeze Chirrut’s knee.

“Well, ah, everyone this is Baze Malbus and Chirrut Imwe, they’re also from Jedha, like me,” Bodhi says.

Luke Skywalker’s eyes go sad at that. Is this really the boy who the Force is supposedly so strong in? He looks nothing like the Jedi who once visited the Temple of Kyber. Even Baze can sense kindness and softness in him, no stoicism, no blankness.

“Baze, Chirrut, this is Wedge Antilles, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca.”

“Care for a drink?” Han asks, already reaching for a bottle. “I think the kids have a pretty solid lead on us, celebration-wise.”

“Hey, it’s easy to get drunk on whatever it is you’re serving,” Luke protests. “I’m still not convinced it’s not paint stripper!”

Bodhi giggles at that and puts his head in his hands.

“Look, kid, you’re free to settle for whatever watered-down swill the Rebellion happens to be serving,” Han says, pushing two glasses across the table to Baze and Chirrut. “I don’t see anybody else serving up something strong enough to be worth drinking.”

Baze pushes Chirrut’s glass right in front of him, and Chirrut finds it easily. He holds it up for Baze to clink their glasses together, and they both shudder at the bite of it. “If anyone has anything stronger than this, I worry for their health,” Baze says as he sets his glass back down.

Chewbacca roars in something like amusement. Han mutters something dark in response, and Luke is laughing. “What’d he say?” he asks, leaning in towards Han, still half-draped over Bodhi.

“Nothing,” Han mutters, but Chewbacca roars again, this time pounding the table hard enough their glasses all rattle. “Fine, fine! He says maybe everyone should worry about my health if this is the sort of stuff I’m drinking. Look, Chewie, just because it’s not the finest Kashyyyk leaf-wine doesn’t mean you’ve gotta complain about it! No one’s makin’ _you_ drink it, alright?”

Bodhi interrupts what’s looking to become a revisitation of an old argument with a thoughtful, “I didn’t realize you drank.”

“While we were discouraged from drinking to excess, some wine here and there was never forbidden,” Chirrut says. “In the days before the empire, the Temple would sometimes sell mulled wines during street festivals. Never anything as strong as this, of course.”

“Wait, are you two some kinda monks?” Han asks, one eyebrow quirked up. He gestures towards Baze. “No offense, pal, but you don’t really look the part.”

“I was once,” Baze says.

“The Guardians of the Whills weren’t really monks, right?” Bodhi asks.

He’s a little too drunk for Baze to fault him for easy use of the past tense, but it still makes the dull pain he’s been avoiding all night flare back up again like an old wound neary re-opened. Chirrut, though, is quick to answer, temperate as always: “We considered ourselves guardians more than monks, both of the kyber and of the living Force.”

“Oh, great,” Han says. “The Force again.”

“The Force?” Luke sits up straight at that, suddenly focused. “Like the Jedi?” 

“We were no Jedi, but we studied the Force,” Chirrut says.

“Did you...No, that’s a stupid question,” Luke says to himself. “You didn’t know Obi-Wan Kenobi, did you? He was a Jedi.”

“I’m afraid not,” Chirrut says. “Few Jedi came to our temple, and none after the fall, which happened when Baze and I were not much older than yourself.”

“Old Ben was going to teach me,” Luke says, a little wistful. “He’s the whole reason I’m here, I guess.”

“Well, thank god for that,” Wedge says. He lifts his glass. “A toast, to Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

They all raise their glasses and drink. Baze lets the burn ground him. He is, he reminds himself, not the only one grieving. Oh, but _Jedha_. All of it, every brick of the temple, every alleyway he’d gotten lost in, every street-stall and vendor. Every pilgrim, every pickpocket, _gone_.

“Baze and I are no Jedi, but perhaps we can teach you a few things,” Chirrut says. He taps his staff against the ground once. “For now, though, Baze and I should find our other companions, don’t you think, Baze?”

Baze throws back the last of his drink before answering. “Yes,” he says. “I suppose so.”

* * *

They’re halfway down one of the hallways leading out from the cafeteria when there’s loud footsteps behind them and a familiar voice calling for them to stop. Baze turns, and there’s Han Solo, jogging up to them.

“I have a favor to ask you two,” he says.

Baze glances at Chirrut, whose expression is curious, then says, “No promises.”

Han sticks his hands in the air in surrender and quirks his head. “Of course not. But it’s not a dangerous favor. At least I think. Uh, maybe sensitive. I hope I’m not overstepping here. But you guys are from Jedha. Could you maybe talk to the Princess?”

Baze thinks back hard: the princess, the woman who’d presented the awards ceremony just a few hours earlier, stately and poised. “I don’t follow,” he says.

“Leia’s from Alderaan. Alderaan, the planet that the Death Star kind of completely obliterated?” He shrugs, reaching into his jacket for something. “I know she’s gotta be grieving, but she won’t talk to me about it. Don’t think she really trusts me, which is fine. I wouldn’t trust me either. But maybe she’d talk to you. You gotta know how she feels better than just about anyone else. And, hey, give her this.” The thing he takes out of his jacket is a small glass bottle, corked with unfamiliar wood.

“We’re strangers to her,” Chirrut says. “But we will try.”

“Thanks, pal. I owe you one.” He grins and starts to turn when Baze interrupts him.

“What is this?”

“Kashyyyk leaf-wine,” Han says. He spins on his heel to wink at them. “Don’t tell Chewie.” And then he’s gone.

“I’d chosen to leave Bodhi and the others in hopes of distracting you,” Chirrut says. “Perhaps we should find this young woman, though.”

Baze aches all over, and there’s a knot in his throat that feels tighter every time someone mentions Jedha. But he thinks of how lonely it would be to have lost Jedha when he was a young man, to have lost Jedha without the benefit of Chirrut by his side. He puts the leaf-wine into one of the pockets of his borrowed flightsuit. And then he reaches out for Chirrut’s wrist. He slides his index finger to rest over Chirrut’s pulse, and he lets all of his attention be drawn to the rhythm of it. His grief settles in his stomach, no longer threatening to overwhelm him. After a few moments, he squeezes and lets go.

“Thank you, Chirrut,” he says.

Chirrut’s smile is sad. “You still meditate in your own way, hmm?” 

Baze feels his face got hot, and he yanks Chirrut towards him out of reflex. “I never quit, not really,” he mumbles into Chirrut’s hair.

Chirrut kisses him chastely. “Let’s find this princess and deliver her her gift.”

“Yes,” Baze says.

* * *

It is Chirrut who finds her. “I can sense her,” he says. “Like kyber.” She is outside, standing on one of the landing strips, staring at the night sky.

It’s Chirrut who walks first, Baze following. His cane scrapes on the permacrete. “Princess Leia, your pilot friend sent us with something for you.”

“Which pilot friend, Luke or the annoying one?” she asks. Her voice is stronger, more cutting than Baze had expected.

“The annoying one,” Chirrut says.

The stars are bright, and they’re close enough to Leia now that when she turns to look at them, Baze can see recognition in her eyes. “Oh, you must be the other members of Rogue One,” she says. “We haven’t been introduced, but Captain Andor speaks quite highly of you. Remind me of your names?”

She looks young but sounds like a seasoned diplomat. The disconnect jars Baze enough that Chirrut speaks for both of them. “I am Chirrut Imwe, and this is my husband, Baze Malbus.”

“We owe you our thanks, as the Rebellion,” she says, arms crossed against her chest. “For you to do what you did was incredibly brave. We would be honored to have you join us, but if you would rather, we will arrange for off-world transport after the evacuation to the new base has been arranged.”

“Thank you,” Chirrut says. Then, wry, “It is not as if we can return to Jedha.”

She tips her head back to the sky for a moment before looking back to them. “I mourn for the loss of your world,” she says. “The Empire will pay.”

Baze pulls the glass flask out of his flightsuit. “And we mourn the loss of yours,” he says. He’s surprised by how rough his voice sounds. “Solo wanted you to have this. Wine of some sort.”

When she takes it from him, he notices how small her hands are. She’s shorter than he realized, and he can’t decide if she’s younger or older than Luke.

“It’s funny,” she says, as if to herself, turning the bottle over in her hands. “I don’t know that I even really feel it yet. I saw it happen, but it’s still like I believe it’s there.”

“Grief is a terrible thing to feel,” he says gently. He thinks of all the orphans who passed through the Temple doors through his years there, younger than Leia, yes, but not by so much. “It will come and go in strange ways. There is no wrong way to feel it.”

Leia is proud, so Baze expects the flash of resentment in her eyes at receiving advice unasked for. But after that there’s recognition. She knows they’ve lost everything, too.

He wants to tell her that if she ever wants to talk, she ought find him or Chirrut. But she leaves with the Rebellion. And to offer her that, Baze would have to do the same. He bites his tongue.

“Thank you,” she says.

They leave her to stare at the old light of stars by herself.

* * *

“You chose your words well,” Chirrut says, once they reach the warmth of indoors. His hand is inside the crook of Baze’s elbow, despite being able to navigate by himself, but Baze appreciates the comfort of it.

Baze grunts in acknowledgement. “I hope so. She is proud.”

“Like you,” Chirrut teases, squeezing at Baze’s arm.

“Yes,” Baze admits. Chirrut squeezes at his arm again, this time in reassurance. “I don’t know that we helped at all. She is reserved, in her own way.”

“We did,” Chirrut says. “I felt it.”

He hopes Chirrut is right. It comforts him to think about.

* * *

Their quarters on Yavin are small, and the entire base is full of people drinking and talking and laughing. Even were it not for the noise, Baze might be too restless to sleep. Something about Leia nags at him. She is too young to shoulder the Rebellion, but what else could she do? She is also too young to shoulder the loss of her mother, her father, her entire planet. But she has no other choice.

They’re all too young: Bodhi, Jyn, Luke, Leia, even Cassian.

He rolls over on the bed to watch Chirrut, who is undressing carefully. He takes off the bandolier that holds his echo-box first and lays it gently on top of the cabinets, then takes off the top layer of his robes. He folds them neatly and sets them aside, next to the echo-box. He stands in silence at the foot of the bed, the set of his shoulders uneasy.

“What is it?” Baze asks.

Chirrut clenches his jaw and tilts his head towards Baze. “I would stay with the Rebellion,” he says shortly.

It is more or less what Baze expected to hear.

Chirrut feels where the edge of the bed is, then sits, back to Baze. His hands are clenched in his lap. “Perhaps you would not have to join in order to stay,” he says. “We are married. You could stay on the base with me, without having to--”

“Chirrut,” he says. He pushes himself up on his elbows. Chirrut is angled toward the other side of the room.

“I know how you feel about them, Baze,” he says softly. “And you have cause to feel as you do. But I--”

“Chirrut,” Baze says, “I’ll join.”

Chirrut’s entire body slackens in relief. Baze sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed so he can sit next to Chirrut. He covers Chirrut’s hand on his knee with his own.

“They’re so young,” Baze says. “They’re all just so young.”

Chirrut nods and turns his hand so their palms touch and their fingers interlace. “You know I wouldn’t go without you, if you didn’t want to go,” he says.

Baze says, “Meditate with me.”

Chirrut turns his face to Baze, eyebrows furrowed in shock. Baze squeezes his hand and tries not to laugh.

“So many surprises tonight,” Chirrut says.

Baze stands and tugs to get Chirrut to follow him. In the center of the room, they sit across from each other, cross-legged, for the first time in years. He doesn’t know why tonight of all nights he feels a tug towards the old ways, the practices he’d abandoned when he first fled Jedha. He doesn’t know why his grief doesn’t cleave him further from faith. Something in him wants stillness, and he wants stillness alongside Chirrut.

“No chanting this time,” Baze says, as Chirrut assumes his posture.

“No need when I can hear your body creak so loud,” Chirrut says. “Your posture must be terrible.”

Baze flicks at Chirrut’s knee, then straightens his back, rolls his shoulders. Chirrut is right; Baze’s body is unused to sitting like this and aches with the strain of it. But it’s a pain that will subside. Like all pains, Baze thinks. He closes his eyes and listens to Chirrut’s deep, even breathing. His mind stills slowly, but it stills. When his thoughts surge back up again, he has the sound of Chirrut’s breath to return to until the stillness settles again.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://twentyeightghosts.tumblr.com/), mostly emotional about Rogue One <3


End file.
